Report: Trump is Terrified about Going to Prison after Losing the Election
In September 2019, Donald Trump’s lawyers debuted a bold new legal argument. Attempting to quash a subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which had requested eight years of tax returns to determine if the Trump Organization has falsified business records relating to payouts made to a porn star and a Playboy model, the president’s attorneys insisted that such a request was unconstitutional because the founding fathers believed sitting presidents should not be subject to the criminal process, which would “distract the president” from his duties. Pressed by a judge on this argument, and the hypothetical Trump busted out during the 2016 election—that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters”—attorney William Consovoy insisted that yes, that kind of thing would fall under this concept of “presidential immunity,” i.e. Trump could put a bullet in a random pedestrian and avoid prosecution until moving out of the White House.
Unsurprisingly, actual legal experts weren’t convinced of this argument and neither was the Supreme Court, which ruled last July, in the words of Reuters, “that there are limits to the powers of the presidency and stoutly reaffirmed the principle that not even the president is above the law.” Still, Trump’s lackeys, which include the Attorney General of the United States, have done their part to shield him from situations wherein he could be convicted of a variety of crimes, getting him through almost an entire term without an embarrassing situation wherein a sitting president is, say, found guilty of falsifying business records regarding a hush money payment he made to an adult-film star.
Unfortunately for Trump, if he loses the 2020 election, he’ll no longer be able to use the staff of the Justice Department as his personal lawyers. That’s a worrisome thing for a guy who’s potentially committed numerous crimes, and we know this because Trump is reportedly soiling himself in fear over what he might be prosecuted for, and maybe go to jail over, after he leaves office. Per the New York Times:
Seldom far from Mr. Trump’s thoughts, however, is the possibility of defeat—and the potential consequences of being ejected from the White House. In unguarded moments, Mr. Trump has for weeks told advisers that he expects to face intensifying scrutiny from prosecutors if he loses. He is concerned not only about existing investigations in New York, but the potential for new federal probes as well, according to people who have spoken with him.
As The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote in an article published over the weekend, the world awaiting Trump when and if he loses the election is a dark one, and not just because he’ll no longer have a taxpayer-funded staff at his disposal to lie for him:
Given that more than a dozen investigations and civil suits involving Trump are currently under way, he could be looking at an endgame even more perilous than the one confronted by Nixon. The Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said of Trump, “If he loses, you have a situation that’s not dissimilar to that of Nixon when he resigned. Nixon spoke of the cell door clanging shut.” Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden. Even if Trump wins, grave legal and financial threats will loom over his second term.
Two of the investigations into Trump are being led by powerful state and city law-enforcement officials in New York. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, are independently pursuing potential criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became President. Because their jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a Presidential pardon. Trump’s legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. (By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, he’d racked up more than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trump’s finances are already under growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning recent Times report, Trump—whether reëlected or not—must meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with the lenders, he will be on the hook.